must be worse even than
that of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads,--whether he reads or not,
some good or evil genius will tell him his ancestors were kings.
Thenceforward his object must be to assert himself and to avenge his
parents. This you will say is not his duty. That may be; but it is
Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely to
trust to duty. In this futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in its
bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction,
inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. In
short, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority)
that has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the smallest degree of
just correspondence or symmetry or amicable relation with the supreme
power, either as it now exists, or as it is planned for the future
government.

You have settled, by an economy as perverted as the policy, two[125]
establishments of government,--one real, one fictitious: both
maintained at a vast expense; but the fictitious at, I think, the
greatest. Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease of its
wheels. The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the use
deserve the tenth part of the charge.--Oh! but I don't do justice to the
talents of the legislators: I don't allow, as I ought to do, for
necessity. Their scheme of executive force was not their choice. This
pageant must be kept. The people would not consent to part with
it.--Right: I understand you. You do, in spite of your grand theories,
to which you would have heaven and earth to bend, you do know how to
conform yourselves to the nature and circumstances of things. But when
you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have
carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obliged
to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end. That was in your
power. For instance, among many others, it was in your power to leave to
your king the right of peace and war.--What! to leave to the executive
magistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives?--I know none more
dangerous; nor any one more necessary to be so trusted. I do not say
that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king, unless he
enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it, which he does not now
hold. But, if he did possess them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly,
advantages would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensa